Safety

Regulation

Like Doctors and Dentists, Chiropractors are governed by a statutory Regulatory Body, the General Chiropractic Council,
which has the power to suspend or strike off members of the profession who are guilty of unacceptable professional conduct or negligence.

The GCC sets the minimum standards for clinical practice and for training of undergraduate chiropractors and implements qualifying standards for chiropractors
entering the UK from abroad.

Chiropractic has undoubtedly been made safer since the GCC opened its register in 1999; before then, anyone could claim
to be a chiropractor, even if they had no training, now it is a criminal offence to style yourself as a chiropractor unless you are
registered with the GCC and meet its annual registration criteria.

Safe With Us

Our clinics were amongst the first to sign up for the Royal College of Chiropractors' Safe With Us
campaign. For more information click here to download our flyer.

This initiative aims to nurture the safety of care provided by chiropractors, and help practitioners reflect and learn from patient
experiences in their own and other practices.

Each clinic now has a Safety Lead who plans and runs Patient Safety Meetings and is responsible for our Patient Safety Incident Management
Policy; they also liaise with the Royal College and with other clinics to predict and prevent potential problems and make sure that
the attest clinical guidelines and thinking are available to all practitioners as soon as they become available.

If you have any concerns about the safety or governance of any aspect of your treatment at any of our clinics, please feel free to approach the healthcare professional responsible. If you feel unable or unwilling to do this, then the Practice Manager, Rachel Cartwright or her deputy, Sue White, will be happy to intervene or act on your behalf or to provide you with details of our formal complaints protocols.

Risks

Experiencing mild or moderate adverse effects (known as benign adverse events) is relatively common after chiropractic care, affecting
30-50% of patients. However, these effects are not unique to chiropractic care and may also be experienced at similar frequency
with other forms of manual therapy, including that delivered by physiotherapists and osteopaths. Note that these effects:

are short-lived (usually resolve within 24 hours);

may include musculoskeletal pain, stiffness and/or headache;

may also include dizziness, tiredness, feeling faint/lightheaded and/or tingling in the arms following neck treatment.

The evidence suggests that it is difficult to predict which patients are more likely to experience adverse events. Patients with
higher levels of neck pain may have a greater chance of experiencing symptoms from the nerves in the arms (i.e. tingling or discomfort).
However, although benign adverse events may be a problem for neck-pain patients in the short-term, they do not seem to affect results
in the longer term.

There are rare reported cases of serious spinal or neurological problems, including strokes, following chiropractic care. Because
of their rarity, it is unclear what the level of risk is, but it has been estimated at between 1 in tens of thousands and 1 in millions
of treatments. Since serious adverse events may result from pre-existing underlying conditions, screening for potential risk factors,
signs or symptoms is a routine element of a visit to a chiropractor.

There appears to be an association between chiropractor visits and stroke associated with arteries in the neck; however, the level
of risk appears to be similar to that for medical practitioner visits. This suggests the treatment may not be related to the stroke,
but that the early symptoms of stroke, such as neck pain, led the patient to visit the practitioner. Thus, screening for known neck
artery stroke risk factors, or signs or symptoms that there may be a problem, is routinely undertaken by chiropractors.